1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a writing instrument by which a character or the like is written on a display portion, and a technique which digitizes information written with the writing instrument.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in using a whiteboard at a meeting or the like, the content written down on the whiteboard by a writer with a whiteboard marker is stored in such a way that information written down on the whiteboard is read by an image sensor such as a scanner mounted on the whiteboard and is printed on recording paper. Further, in the case where the information written down on the whiteboard is shared by multiple people, a copy of the recording paper is distributed to each person.
Since the method of storing information written down on a conventional whiteboard is limited to making a hard copy on recording paper only, there is a problem in that long-term storage of the information is difficult due to wear and tear or the like of the recording paper. In addition, in the case where the information is desired to be shared by multiple people, a copy of the recording paper needs to be distributed to each person, which is troublesome and makes it difficult to share the information at the same time with a person at a remote location. A method of reading and digitizing the hard copy as image data with an image sensor so as to share the information is conceivable; however, there is a problem in that image quality is degraded because another reading is conducted.
Further, since the information cannot be stored without writing on the whiteboard mounted with an image sensor, even for a meeting with a small number of people, they have to take the trouble to move to a meeting room or the like where a whiteboard mounted with an image sensor is equipped, which is inconvenient.
In such a situation, a technique of using a CCD sensor to obtain an image of information written down on paper with a pen and digitizing the obtained image data to be stored in a memory device mounted on the pen is proposed (For example, Patent Document 1: Japanese Published Patent Application No. H8-30370).